• Question: if it possible to live forever? i know that we're dying slowly every day BUT! cant someone just make some type of medincine to preserve our DNA?

    Asked by IQ140 to Sinead, Anne on 9 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Sinead Balgobin

      Sinead Balgobin answered on 9 Nov 2015:


      Would you want to live forever? Our short lifetimes are sort of what makes them special, right? What do you think?

      To study how to live forever, you have to understand why we get old. Outside influences, like smoking and drinking, can make our cells die, which makes our bodies older. Inside, our DNA and other parts of our body can get injured. DNA injuries can cause “mutations” which aren’t necessarily very dangerous, but can change how our cells work. If other parts of our body get injured, they might not be very good at repairing themselves. There are so many things that factor into why we age, it would be really complicated to solve every single problem- after all, we aren’t just bags of DNA, we are really complicated biological machines, made of smaller biological machines, made of EVEN SMALLER biological machines…

      There are some people who think that it is possible to slow down ageing so that we can live for longer- one person even thinks the first person who will live to 1000 has already been born! Mostly, scientists agree that it would be an almost impossible task.

      Have you heard of the naked mole rat? Or the water bear (tardigrade)? These animals have evolved to be able to slow down their ageing, and resist bad enviromental effects, so they can live for a lot longer than they should for their size. The naked mole rat is even resistant to cancer!

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